Apple Patents An Automated, Motorised Screen Protector For The iPhone

What could hurt someone to the core is a shattered display that comes often if one doesn’t keep thy phone like a newborn. To sway away those worries, Apple has patented a model that could possibly protect your phone’s display when you drop it to the floor next time.

Through sensors built into the phone, the device will know when it is being dropped. Retractable tabs will then be extended around the phone’s display, meaning that if it were dropped and lands on its face, the shock will be absorbed by the tabs as opposed to the glass display absorbing all of the damage.

This might not save you when your device falls on the edge but will surely come handy to protect you from full frontal damage.

On technical part, four tiny projected polymer tabs eject when the device is in free-fall to provide a mini shock absorber function for the display.

Powering tab movement are motors or actuators attached to a mechanism similar to a rack and pinion drive. This will simply eject out the tabs when the fall is close to touch the ground. This will also require a certain number of sensors like proximity sensor that iPhone already possesses.

Apple also notes cameras can detect proximity to a fast-approaching object with specialized motion capture software. This model could come handy to the bezel free iPhones that Apple might manufacture in coming time.

Apple’s active screen protector patent application was first filed for in April 2014 and credits Tyson B. Manullang, Stephen B. Lynch and Emery A. Sanford as its inventors.